Patients put at risk as foreign nurses cheat on English tests

Foreign nurses are using falsely obtained English qualifications to come to Britain to work in the National Health Service, the nurses' regulatory body said yesterday.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has found that non English-speaking candidates, primarily from China and Pakistan, are claiming to have passed the required language exams in their homelands before emigrating to Britain. It has detected 12 cheats so far, and is concerned that the fraud is compromising patient safety.

Adrian Daghorn, the NMC's head of registration, said: "We are being presented with very authentic-looking certificates with seemingly authentic British Council stamps and photographs of the applicant.

Nurses working here without English skills pose a real threat to patient safety, because it means they won't be able to read prescriptions or understand what other medics, or patients in pain or discomfort, are saying. It is about economic migration.

"Nurses who don't have a high enough standard of English are desperate to get here, but we are stamping out this fraud through these checks because it is a serious issue."

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The findings come after a survey published on Thursday by the Council of Deans, the body which represents university nursing courses, found that an estimated 80 per cent of student nurses due to graduate this year have been unable to find jobs.

It is unknown how many cheats slipped through the net prior to the NMC starting its follow-up checks last September through the British Council, which is responsible for putting would-be nurses from other countries through the International English Language Testing System.

Some applicants have been discovered arranging for someone with better English skills to sit the IELTS for them.

Kathy George, the NMC's director of standards, said: "Applicants visit websites that help them with forgeries. You can do it in many job areas, such as engineering and science. I don't suppose it is any different for nursing."

She predicted that the NMC might out-source the facility that checks for fraudulent applications, and gave warning that the increased cost of processing job applications from foreign nurses would be passed on to the applicants.

The NMC is frustrated that, while it can test for English language skills outside the European Union, it is not allowed to test within the EU under EU regulations.

It has pledged to lobby more intensively for language testing for nurses moving between EU member states to improve patient safety.

Jonathan Asbridge, the president of the NMC, told its council meeting this month: "Under this EU directive a nurse from England can practise in Greece without a word of Greek, and be deemed safe. I do not think so."

France has got around the problem by testing all job applicants for French language skills, including the French, so that the whole language skills screening process can be deemed to be equitable. Lawyers have advised the NMC, which is interested in pursuing a similar practice here, that it does not comply with European regulations.

The NMC is raising its pass mark next year after complaints about the poor quality of foreign nurses' language skills.

The Royal College of Nursing backed the NMC's stance. Howard Catton, the RCN's head of policy, said: "Language is such a fundamental skill if nurses are to deliver high quality patient care, because communication is at the heart of nursing practice.

"All nurses need to be able to understand phrases like 'I need to spend a penny', or they can't nurse properly."